Weehawken has agreed to pay its former tax collector at least $120,000 to settle a whistleblower lawsuit claiming Mayor Richard Turner illegally ordered high assessments of luxury properties to fill township coffers.

John Fredericks, the tax collector, will receive the funds, which include terminal leave pay for nearly 154 days and a $15,000 pay raise, in exchange for stepping down on May 14. The settlement agreement stipulates that the township has not admitted any wrongdoing.

Fredericks had been seeking about $1 million in punitive damages from Turner and about $250,000 in back pay.

The three-page agreement calls the settlement the "compromise of a doubtful and disputed claim."

Fredericks' payout includes the $15,000 increase to his roughly $110,000 salary, retroactive to May 2011; terminal leave payments staggered over five years; $45,000 for his attorney, Louis Zayas; and an additional $30,000 for Fredericks.

The Jersey Journal has reached to Zayas and Turner for comment.

Fredericks filed the suit in December 2012 in federal court, claiming Turner ordered the tax collector to hit Weehawken waterfront properties with levies as high as 30 percent more than they should have been. The township's labor attorney has called the charges "bogus."